Man Dies After Push Onto Track

Ki-Suck Han was hit and killed by a subway train on Monday, Dec. 3. New York Police say the Queens resident was pushed onto the 49th Street station tracks and want to question a man he had argued with earlier.

By

Tamer El-Ghobashy and

Ted Mann

Updated Dec. 3, 2012 10:54 p.m. ET

A Queens man was struck and killed by an incoming train at a Midtown subway station after getting into an altercation with an apparently emotionally disturbed assailant who pushed him onto the tracks, authorities said.

Witnesses described a fast-moving series of events that unfolded at about 12:30 p.m. on the southbound platform of the 49th Street station near Times Square, a law-enforcement official said. There, 58-year-old Ki-Suck Han got into "some type of dispute" with another man, who then pushed him into the path of an approaching Q train, the official said.

Police arriving on the scene discovered Mr. Han caught between the platform and the subway car. He was removed and taken to St. Luke's-Roosevelt Hospital Center by ambulance, where he died, police said.

According to
Paul Browne,
the top spokesman for the New York Police Department, witnesses reported seeing the suspect talking to himself as he walked along the subway platform. He then approached the victim and "exchanged words" before pushing him onto the tracks as the train bore down on the station, Mr. Browne said.

The victim fell into the tracks and unsuccessfully attempted to climb back onto the platform, Mr. Browne said.

Mr. Browne said the suspect appeared to be emotionally disturbed to some of the witnesses and it was unclear what kind of conversation he had engaged in with the victim.

The suspect, who was being sought late Monday, was described by witnesses as a black man in his late 20s or early 30s wearing a tan T-shirt, black slacks and a black knit cap and holding a three-quarter-length black coat. He had short dreadlocks.

People who answered the door at Mr. Han's Elmhurst home Monday night declined to comment. Sobbing could be heard inside the apartment.

"There was an argument," said a witness who spoke after being interviewed by police at a Midtown precinct, but declined to provide his name. "There was no screaming."

"It was all so quick," he added.

Patrick Gomez, 37, of Saddle Brook, N.J., said he was near the back of the platform when he heard "a thud" followed by screaming. Then, he said, "the train came to an abrupt stop."

He said it took paramedics about 20 minutes to extract the victim from the tracks. "People were just standing in shock," Mr. Gomez said.

The incident appeared to echo one of the city's most notorious subway attacks: the 1999 killing of Kendra Webdale, who was pushed in front of a train by an emotionally disturbed man.

Investigators on the scene spoke with stunned-looking witnesses, including three people who were put into a police van and driven away from the scene. Uniformed officers diverted riders trying to enter the subway station to 42nd Street. The train's conductor and another witness were being treated for trauma.

Mr. Han's neighbors said that while they knew the man, he mostly kept to himself and had lived in the apartment for a few years. "He's very nice. He takes out the garbage, he sweeps the front," said a next-door neighbor. "He would sit in the front and smoke his cigarettes, he would do his barbecue in the back."

Hours after the attack, Q, N and R trains were still bypassing the station at West 49th Street and Seventh Avenue as police continued the investigation.

It was the second time this year that a dispute on a subway platform led to a passenger being fatally struck by a train.

Two men who fought on the L train platform in Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood in March ended up falling onto the tracks, where 20-year-old student Joshua Basin was struck and killed by an incoming train.

Mr. Basin's assailant was eventually charged with several misdemeanors in the incident, including attempted third-degree assault.

In 2000, a deranged man tried to push four people off platforms at two stations in Manhattan before being arrested.

In 2010, a cook was convicted of assault after pushing a woman into the side of a moving subway car at the 28th Street and Broadway station, which serves the Q, N and R trains.

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